3D Hubs Forum

Everyday we make changes and improvements to 3D Hubs website. If you have ideas for improvements or feature requests, this is the place to drop them. Get other people to vote up your ideas to accelerate the focus we give to it.

I suggest you ...

You've used all your votes and won't be able to post a new idea, but you can still search and comment on existing ideas.

There are two ways to get more votes:

When an admin closes an idea you've voted on, you'll get your votes back from that idea.

You can remove your votes from an open idea you support.

To see ideas you have already voted on, select the "My feedback" filter and select "My open ideas".

Enter your idea

(thinking…)

Enter your idea and we'll search to see if someone has already suggested it.

If a similar idea already exists, you can support and comment on it.

If it doesn't exist, you can post your idea so others can support it.

Enter your idea and we'll search to see if someone has already suggested it.

This is a great idea, as a matter of fact we built it a while back but the performance of the discount codes didn’t scale at all, with 9000+ printers on the platform that is pretty crucial so we’ll be revamping the discount system so we can once again have Hubs offer discounts to customers. Stay tuned.

Allow a business hours setting so that the response time doesn't start until the hub is open for business. This will help users know not to expect a response until the hub is open and will save hub operators from 4 AM text messages or emails from the reminders.

1- infill is a huge factor in print time and cost
2- sometimes manual supports, pre & post processing or fileprep are needed. Allow me to charge for it when conditions apply.
3-allow me to specify different names for multiple printers (& pricing) at my hub

Can we please adjust response time. Submissions at 2am negatively affects your response time. As do week end submissions. Either adjust the calculation to take into to account reasonable business hours, or better still add a feature so Hubs can set their business hours, which will indicate when people can expect a response. I'd go with the former, it's cleaner, and less prone to creating pressure on competing hubs to operate at stupid oclock.

If a hub owner is going on vacation or to a conference for a week or two it would be nice to have a vacation mode or a temporarily offline mode. There could be one toggle switch with a corresponding date field that takes the hub printers offline but still allows the hub to show in search results. The difference being that it has a message stating something to the effect of "This hub is temporarily offline and will resume accepting orders on (date)". This way existing customers know you're still around, and, potential new customers may see still view your hub and even be willing to wait the x days until you're available again if they like what they see over the other hubs available.

Taking printers offline and disappearing from search results is a bit of a penalty IMHO and I don't think a hub should be penalized for taking vacation or going out of town on a business trip.

If a hub owner is going on vacation or to a conference for a week or two it would be nice to have a vacation mode or a temporarily offline mode. There could be one toggle switch with a corresponding date field that takes the hub printers offline but still allows the hub to show in search results. The difference being that it has a message stating something to the effect of "This hub is temporarily offline and will resume accepting orders on (date)". This way existing customers know you're still around, and, potential new customers may see still view…

We’re working hard to increase our printability detection so it will be less of a problem. Furthermore we’re also working on making the hub score less sensitive for individual orders.

However, we’re not planning to remove unprintable orders from the hub score as we can’t automatically identify them with full certainty. Doing so would open up the platform to be gamed by dishonest services, which is something we all don’t want.

Thanks for sending us this idea, will continue our conversation about this. It’s a complex topic as time is very dependant per printer, but also per printer settings, it’s not something that goes for every type of printer as easily.. nevertheless it would be interesting to be able to charge this way.

I received an order request at 12:25am. It is Sunday. I then received an email from 3D Hubs at 4:26am requesting for a response and saying this will improve my hub ranking, implying that it would decrease my hub ranking if I did the opposite, to not respond within 4 hours.

I received these emails at 8:57am, again to reiterate it is Sunday morning. I was not even awake to get the hint from the 3D hubs digital night owls.

My suggestion to 3D hubs.

If an order comes in anytime during "out of hours", for example let's assume those hours to be 7pm-7am (but these could be set by each hub individually). Then the response time should increase until at least the next morning around 9-10am or if the order was received at 1am at least give the hub a realistic time respond.

Most customers use 3D hubs because of locality to their nearest hub and most customers are likely to be within the same time zone at worse +/- an hour. Sure, some customers work late and submit orders in the middle of the night, but I doubt they're expecting to get a response within 4 hours, even if the "auto message" by 3D hubs (that shows as coming from the hub) says:

"Thank you for your order. I will check your requirements and the manufacturability of your designs as soon as possible, on average I get back to customers in X min(s). In case you have additional questions please reply to me here."

Instead

For any orders that are received during "out of hours" an alternative message informing the customer that the hub will respond "in them morning" should be shown.

What does 3D Hubs have to say on this?

I see this as an important and urgent improvement to the platform and one that in theory from a development/technical perspective to be easy to implement as a lot of the code is implemented it's an adjustment to the current "4 hour" codebase.

The result of this change would greatly improve the experience of the platform for both the customer and the 3D hub.

What do other 3D hubs users think, any improvement/amendments/alternative ideas on this suggestion?

I received an order request at 12:25am. It is Sunday. I then received an email from 3D Hubs at 4:26am requesting for a response and saying this will improve my hub ranking, implying that it would decrease my hub ranking if I did the opposite, to not respond within 4 hours.

I received these emails at 8:57am, again to reiterate it is Sunday morning. I was not even awake to get the hint from the 3D hubs digital night owls.

My suggestion to 3D hubs.

If an order comes in anytime during "out of hours", for example let's assume those…

Very cool, this has crossed our minds (and brainstorms) a few times in the past. If we want to do this we want to do it well, and it’s a pretty serious chunk of functionality to build so it might take a little while till we can offer it, but it’s on our radar :-)

I would love to be able to have printable gift certificates valued towards prints on my hub. These would be useful for giving as gifts, donating to events and charity, or even handing out to my customers as a thank you.

I realize you guys are pushing the "mobile site" as a be-all-end-all but an app would allow Push notifications, full use of the iOS/Android notification APIs and in general I'd way rather hit a single button on my phone than have to navigate through Safari, go to my bookmarks, pull up the site, then wonder if cookies will work right.

Additionally, iOS users could then apply a touch ID to login. Boom. Expert-level UI/UX for the win. You'd be silly to not be going this direction, honestly.

I would like to share with you one of my top feedback from my customers (99% are local, so they're French just like me).

They find the overall ergonomy of the website, in particular the interface to place order, very confusing. Most of them have difficulties to easily understand english, so it doesn't help. This might be a generation gap thing, because most of them are 40+.

It feels a bit like some people in need of 3D print, could be stuck and discouraged of oredering because of it.

You would let, not just for French market, but for every country you are implanted in, the opportunity to have their own translation !

Best regards.

I would like to share with you one of my top feedback from my customers (99% are local, so they're French just like me).

They find the overall ergonomy of the website, in particular the interface to place order, very confusing. Most of them have difficulties to easily understand english, so it doesn't help. This might be a generation gap thing, because most of them are 40+.

It feels a bit like some people in need of 3D print, could be stuck and discouraged of oredering because of it.

I get a lot of requests to ship prints. Usually what I do is print out the main order page that shows the shipping address, then cut it out and tape it to the box. Then, I have to find a USPS office and get it shipped. It would MUCH nicer to just generate the USPS label directly from 3DHubs and then drop it in the nearest mailbox. This would be super convenient.

At a minimum though, I'd like the ability to just easily print the shipping address and return address so that I can slap it on the box and then take it to a USPS office.

Thanks for considering it!

I get a lot of requests to ship prints. Usually what I do is print out the main order page that shows the shipping address, then cut it out and tape it to the box. Then, I have to find a USPS office and get it shipped. It would MUCH nicer to just generate the USPS label directly from 3DHubs and then drop it in the nearest mailbox. This would be super convenient.

At a minimum though, I'd like the ability to just easily print the shipping address and return address so that I can slap it on the box…

When defining your hub printers, it would be good it we could enter a max build plate size, ie 150mm x 150mm x120mm.
3d hubs could then reject prints that are too big. I hate having to reject orders because customers are not advised of sizes available.

I love that 3Dhubs messages me on the phone to let me know I've gotten a customer or a message. But the way with SMS, logging in via the browser and trying to navigate the UI on mobile is old fashioned and frustrating. Make an app to allow a more seamless experience in dealing with customers on the go!

This has happened to me a few times.
1) Customer will submit an order for X model.
2) I'll check the model, fix any errors with pricing and "accept" the order, 3d hubs will request payment at that point.
3) the customer adds or replaces the models submitted, changing the size of the order (I've had a customer add over 100 hours to the print time and still expect me to hit the quoted deadline) or upload a model that the slicer calculates the volume incorrectly, for example if the client asks for a 100% infill print that I adjust for, then would be charged for the 20% infill that 3dhubs uses.

This could easily be solved by going back to the "accept or decline order" phase on the hub's side if the customer makes any changes that causes an effect on the models.

This has happened to me a few times.
1) Customer will submit an order for X model.
2) I'll check the model, fix any errors with pricing and "accept" the order, 3d hubs will request payment at that point.
3) the customer adds or replaces the models submitted, changing the size of the order (I've had a customer add over 100 hours to the print time and still expect me to hit the quoted deadline) or upload a model that the slicer calculates the volume incorrectly, for example if the client asks for a 100% infill print that I adjust…

Hi Will, thanks for sharing this issue. We’ve seen it before and it does cause some unwanted behaviour every now and then.

I think what you’re suggesting makes sense, only downside is that it slows down the order process a bit, preventing customers who are ready to pay from paying, we’ll try to assess how big that downside is as it might impact the business our Hubs are getting. If it looks ok, we can plan this change.